Sorry, but once you go past the lockout, you're going past what is the new NHL. Parity, salary caps, restricted player movement. What happened pre-lockout doesn't apply anymore. The 8th seed has made the finals twice since the lockout.

6 of the 7 Cup winners since the lockout were seeded in the top half of their conference.

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Flyers? When was the last time they've won anything? Or the Sharks? The Canucks? Your measure of success here are two teams that haven't won **** since their inception and a third that hasn't won a Cup since the 70's? What are we talking about here? Regular season success? The joy of being a #1 or 2 seed and not getting it done? We even did THAT. Last year.

Once again, I'm not saying you have to win the Cup every year. But you have to put yourself in position where you have a realistic shot of doing so. Teams like the Flyers, Sharks, and Canucks haven't gotten the job done, but they have routinely fielded good teams that finished in the top half of their conference and made deep playoff runs. That's all you can ask for, and those results are satisfactory. The Flyers aren't perfect, but they've been to the Finals and have won 7 playoff series since the end of the lockout. They've also drafted and developed an elite first line center, the single most important piece of the puzzle. You think I like giving my least favorite team in the league credit? No, but they've earned it. They've been a more successful team. The Rangers have been in the top half of the seeding once, last season, and rather than sustain that, dropped right back to being a bubble team.

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The Bruins have won a Cup, I'll give you that. How'd they do last year in the playoffs? 1st round and out. Sound familiar? How about you're highly touted Penguins? Bounced the first round each of the last two years despite having arguably the two best players on the planet on their teams. It seems you place a lot of emphasis on the regular season.

Why wouldn't I? The regular season obviously is a pretty decent barometer for the playoffs. The best regular season teams tend to consistently go the farthest in the playoffs.

The Penguins won a Stanley Cup and went to a Stanley Cup Final, and probably would have accomplished both again if not for Crosby's injuries. Yes, the Bruins were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs last year. Call me crazy, but I think in the next 3-4 years, they will get out of the first round of the playoffs, and more than once. The Blackhawks were eliminated twice. But in five years, when we look back at this generation of the Blackhawks, don't you think it's reasonable to predict that they will achieve several more deep playoff runs?

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Completely, completely disagree. Every team that I mentioned, and then some, has ZERO difficulty competing with the Rangers in a cap world and most spend every penny that the Rangers do. You think players don't like playing for the Penguins, Flyers, Habs, Boston, etc... just as much as the Rangers? Where'd Iginla want to play? How about Morrow? Jagr? I call BS on this age old thing that might've applied before the lockout. It doesn't now.

But the point is HOW do these teams spend it? The Rangers use their financial advantages to keep Wade Redden in the minors. To buy out Chris Drury. Plenty of teams have made mistakes like this, but how many of them have made as many as the Rangers, and mistakes as egregious?

How many of these teams routinely feature significant roster overhauls as often as the Rangers do? Of the teams that have stood out as the most consistently successful in recent years, only the Flyers undergo radical roster changes relatively frequently.

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We were a #1 seed last year, as I've shown, which shows your argument to be talking out of both sides of your mouth. You're applying different standards to teams that you're using for comparison than you are when you're evaluating your own team. A #8 seed (Edmonton, LAK) has made the finals twice since the lockout. So has a #6 (Devils). So has a #7 (Flyers). So, out of the past 14 teams to make it to the Finals, 4 of them have been a #6 or lower seed. That's roughly 30%. The argument your making held water before the lockout. It simply isn't true in the new parity driven NHL.

Maybe it isn't as large a difference, but last time I checked, 70% was still a lot better than 30%. And, again, 6 of the 7 Cup WINNERS were seeded #1-4.

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Bottom line: you're looking at the NYR through the eyes of a fan that's passionate about his team. I'm passionate as well, but if you're reluctant to say that they've been one of the 10 or 12 best teams, all things considered, then you simply aren't being honest with yourself.

One of the 10 or 12 best? Fine, I agree with that. But what sort of miserable standards are those? When do we get to be one of the 5-6 best? Isn't that what the goal should be? How long is that going to take? How many years? This is year EIGHT.

This all started with this point: major roster overhauls every 2-3 years are a sign that there is no stability of success. The top 5-8 teams in the league don't alter their rosters this drastically this often. It is a symptom of the fundamental problem at the root of this franchise's inability to be elite. The reason the roster has to be changed so much so often is because it is never assembled correctly in the first place. It is an endless and frustrating cycle that doesn't seem to have any end in sight. You can say that the end is near, and I'll give you this: the odds that it is are higher than it has ever been before. Yet, we heard that the end of this "process" was near before. It wasn't.

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The team last year had a chance and almost made it to the finals if Gaborik's shoulder wasn't separated, a goal here or there would've made the difference. If Jagr didn't blow up his shoulder in the playoffs, I think we win that series, too. If Drury's knees didn't give out maybe he would've been the player he was supposed to be. This team has been competitive every year, has gotten to the second round or later 3 out of 7 playoff years, and had the most points in the East last year.

Yeah, those Jagr playoff teams were awful. The blueline was a joke. The bottom six was a joke, and the team was carried by 2 or 3 players every year. Those teams were full of borderline NHLers, and more importantly, players that had no future with the franchise. So it isn't as if we built on what moderate success we had, because hardly any players from those teams remain. I think they got very lucky that year they played the Thrashers, who didn't deserve to be in the playoffs, and I think they got beaten by better, deeper teams.

Last year was nice, but it was the only year where the numbers say we had a major chance to win. One season later, the team has been drastically altered again, and we are right back to where we were 2 years ago in the standings: fighting just to be average or slightly above it.